Drug may help slow diabetic eye disease

MINNEAPOLIS, July 6 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers found a drug used to treat high blood pressure helps slow diabetic eye disease.

The study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, found the progression of diabetic eye damage was slowed in more than 65 percent of the patients with type I diabetes who had participated.

The researchers called their findings unexpected but conclusive.

To determine whether high blood pressure medication could help slow kidney damage, two groups of patients had been administered one of two anti-hypertensive medications -- losartan or enalapril – and the last group, a placebo.

After five years of observation, the researchers found little help for the kidneys but the participants administered either enalapril or losartan did experience a significant slowing of the progression of diabetic eye injury.

"The secondary results of this study showed that people taking these anti-hypertensive medications experienced a substantially positive effect in slowing diabetic eye injury," study leader Dr. Michael Mauer of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis says in a statement.

"Although neither medication delayed early kidney tissue injury or early loss of kidney function, the advantage to a study with negative findings such as this one is that physicians now know that this treatment is ineffective for this purpose, and they can pursue other treatment options that may improve their patients' outcomes."